“I am sorry for you, Edgar. Your soul is being tested. What can I do?”
“Help me with my studies. Be my tutor.”
Jean shook his head. “I cannot.”
“Why?”
“I do not have the time. There are not the hours in the day, for I am determined to read everything I can on the great issues of our time.”
“The Reformation,” Edgar grunted.
“We are fortunate to live in this exciting era.”
“My family is wealthy,” Edgar said suddenly. “I will find a way to pay you.”
“I have no need for money. I only thirst for knowledge. Now, I must be gone.”
“No!” Edgar said this so forcefully he surprised himself. He had to persuade Jean to help; he was at his wit’s end. He thought quickly-perhaps there was a way. It would violate an oath he had given himself, but what choice did he have? He blurted this out: “If you will help me, I will show you something that will, no doubt, fascinate you and greatly stimulate your mind.”
Jean raised his eyebrows. “You have stirred my interest, Edgar. What do you have?”
“A book. I have a book.”
“What book?”
He had crossed the Rubicon. He fell to the floor, opened his clothes chest, and pulled out his father’s large book. “This one.”
“Let me see!”
Edgar placed it on the desk and let Jean inspect it, watching as the serious young man leafed through the pages with increasing amazement. “The year of our Lord 1527. Yet, most of these dates are in the future, in the months to come. How can this be?”
“I have pondered this since I could first read,” Edgar said. “This book has been in my family for generations, passed from father to son. What was the future has become the present.”
Jean came across a sheath of loose parchments stuck into the pages. “And this? This letter?”
“I have not yet read it! I hastily took the pages from my father’s collection when I left England last month. I have long been told it bears on the matter. I had hoped to have the opportunity to study it in Paris, but I have not had the time or strength to do so. It is no favor to me it is in Latin. My head spins!”
Jean regarded him disapprovingly. “Your father does not know you have these?”
“It is not a theft! I borrowed the book and the letter and intend to return them. I have confessed to myself a minor sin.”
Jean was already reading the first page of the abbot’s letter, breezing through the Latin as if it were his native French. He devoured the first page and was on to the second without uttering a word. Edgar left him to his task, studying his face for a reaction, resisting the urge to plead, “What? What does it say?”
As Jean turned pages, his expression was indecipherable although Edgar felt he was watching an older, wiser man, not a fellow student. He read on without interruption for a full fifteen minutes and when the last page was returned to the bottom of the stack, a page marked with the date 9 February, 2027, he simply said, “Incredible.”
“Tell me, please.”
“You truly have not read this?”
“Truly. I beg you-enlighten me!”
“I fear it is a tale of madness or wicked fancy, Edgar. Your treasure undoubtedly belongs on the fire.”
“You are wrong, sir, I am sure. My father has told me the book is a true prophecy.”
“Let me tell you about the nonsense written by this Abbot Felix, then you can judge yourself. I will be brief because if Tempete catches us up so late, we will surely glimpse the gates of hell.”
Chapter 20
The next morning, Edgar did not feel as cold and miserable as usual. He sprang out of bed warmed by the spirit of excitement and camaraderie. While Jean had remained derisive and skeptical, Edgar completely believed everything that was contained in the abbot’s letter.
Finally, he felt he understood the Cantwell family secret and the significance of his strange book. But perhaps more importantly-for a scared, lonely boy adrift in a foreign city, he now had a friend. Jean was kind and attentive and, above all, not scornful. Edgar was sick of scorn being heaped on him like manure. From his father. His brother. His tutors. This French lad was treating him with dignity, like a fellow human being.
Before he departed for the night, Edgar had beseeched Jean to keep his mind open to the possibility that the letter could be a true and factual account rather than the ravings of a lunatic monk. Edgar proposed a plan he had been harboring for some time, and, to his relief, Jean had not summarily dismissed it.
In the chapel, Edgar made eye contact with Jean across the pew and received the precious gift of another small wink. Throughout the morning, the two boys exchanged furtive glances at prayer, in the classroom and at breakfast until in the early afternoon they were finally permitted to speak to each other privately at the start of one of their infrequent recreation periods.
There were flurries of snow in the air, and a crisp wind blew through the school’s courtyard. “You’d better fetch your cloak,” Jean told him. “But be quick.”
They had only two hours for their adventure, and they would not have another opportunity for several days. Though Jean was serious and scholarly, Edgar could sense that he was enjoying the prospect of an escapade even if he thought it was folly. The two boys left the college gate and crossed the bustling and slippery rue Saint Symphorien, dodging horses and carts and piles of animal dung. They walked quickly with a determination and purpose, which they hoped would make them somehow less visible to the thieves and cutthroats who populated the neighborhood.
They passed through a warren of small slick streets populated with cart merchants, money changers, and blacksmiths. With the sounds of clomping horses and banging hammers ringing in their ears, they headed to the rue Danton, a short distance to the west. It was a moderately wide thoroughfare lacking the grandeur of boulevard Saint-Germain, but it was still a prosperous commercial street. Three- and four-story houses and shops crowded one another, their corbeled upper floors shouldering the road. The facades were brightly painted in red and blue, faced with ornamental tiles and paneling. Colorfully evocative signposts identified the buildings as taverns or trade shops. The shops opened onto the street, their lowered fronts doubling as display counters for all manners of goods.
They found number 15 rue Danton three-quarters of the way toward the river, the grand Seine a gray slash in the distance. Rising up from the Ile de la Cite, the spire of the Cathedrale Notre Dame de Paris dominated the skyline like a spike drilled into heaven. Edgar had visited the cathedral on his first day in Paris and marveled that man could build something so magnificent. Its position on a plump little island in the middle of the Seine added to the wonder. He vowed to return as often as he was able.
Number 15 was a house over a pot and pan maker, the only building in its row that was plain black and white, simple white plaster and exposed black beams. “Monsieur Naudin said his apartment was on the second floor,” Jean said, pointing at some windows.
They climbed the cold, narrow stairs to the second floor and banged on a green shiny door. When there was no answer they banged again, louder and more insistently. “Hello!” Jean shouted through the door. “Madame Naudin, are you there?”
From above their heads they heard footsteps, and a middle-aged woman came scraping down the stairs. She accosted the boys irritably. “Why are you making so much noise? Madame is not home.”
“May I ask where she is?” Jean inquired politely. “We are from the College. Monsieur Naudin told us we could pay her a visit this afternoon.”
“She was called out.”
“Where?”
“Not far. Number 8 rue Suger. That’s what she said.”
